


The H

by thewronglong



Category: Red Dwarf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 15:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19771255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewronglong/pseuds/thewronglong
Summary: Inside the head of one Arnold J Rimmer.





	The H

**Author's Note:**

> This can be taken as a companion to the Eternity series or a stand alone.

Rimmer looked at himself in the mirror of the bunk room. His hair was curly again, maybe a little thinner, but still his own. No more wig. He'd done away with that thing almost immediately after becoming Ace, opting for a more efficient adjustment in his program. He could switch from Arnold to Ace in the blink of an eye, but after a while he'd stuck to the latter, the former being just too hard to look at. 

He'd hated that face that stared back in the mirror at him in the time before he'd left. He'd heard the expression "a face only a mother could love", his hadn't even been up to those standards. Then there was the H, that horrible symbol, that one letter, the sound it made barely a breath, but to him it screamed HATE. Hate for himself, hate for his family, his life, or death. That's what is was wasn't it, his death? "H" is for hologram, dead as a can of spam. 

He'd hated that face, so he changed it. He liked it at first. Not so much the face itself, but the reaction it would get, the "oooo"s and "ahhhh"s and the occasional "oh, yes, that's it, more"s. The face of Ace didn't have the H, but he could still feel it. It was a numb feeling on his simulated flesh, an outline, a reminder of what he really was. Who he really was. The face of Ace was that of a pretender. He was just another link in a long chain of actors all struggling to keep up with the role. He'd lasted longer than many, having lived a life of adventure before taking up the banner. Adventure. He'd read somewhere once that being on an adventure meant always being in some sort of trouble that you just couldn't get out of. That's what being Ace was like, one long, troublesome adventure. Before being Ace at least there were breaks in between the trouble, and companionship. He thought he could go it alone. He'd been a loner his whole life, after all. 

As the years passed he became lonely, even when he wasn't alone. Maybe if he could find a replacement he could retire. Perhaps go back and find one of those damsels who'd promised herself to him in her time of great need and take her up on her offer. When the computer suggested a replacement Rimmer from his own universe he thought it had to be a computer error. He told himself he was just going to investigate the glitch.

What he found instead of a glitch was himself, alive and well no less. If anyone knows anything about Arnold J Rimmer was that there was no one in the universe that he hated more than himself. They got along about as well as you would expect which was not at all. Worst of all there was a woman there, and of course that woman just had to be Kochanski. If seeing another Rimmer there had been a punch to the gut then seeing her was an uppercut that sent him flying across the ring. 

He pretended to blow the whole thing off as he was just passing through, another Ace in the wind. That was, until that night Lister came to him alone and asked in a broken voice what had happened to his Rimmer. HIS Rimmer! He had a Rimmer, and he had told him as much.

"Yes," Lister had said, "but it's not MY Rimmer, he's fine and all, but…"

He couldn't bring himself to leave again after that. He stayed and convinced the living Rimmer to take his place, with promises of action, and adventurer, and, let's face it, quite a bit of sex. He was mildly surprised when the cowardly git took him up on the offer. Kochanski bumming a ride home on the Wildfire was just a happy bonus. 

None of that had compared though to the look on Listy's face when he told him that he was, in fact, "his Rimmer," and that he'd like to stay if that was okay.

Now the face in the mirror was his own again, H and all. Sure he didn't necessarily have to wear the letter, but now it meant something else. It no longer meant "hologram", or even "half-wit". You could argue that it meant "home", but to one Arnold J Rimmer it meant "his". To Lister, he was "his Rimmer" and he wasn't ever going to leave that again.


End file.
